First of all, I haven’t seen this reported elsewhere, so it may well be a scoop for Get FISA Right. Digg it!* Please retweet!** And please help Get FISA Right get the word out about this news on Facebook!

2009 03 05

Sunday night, Agency.com relaunched the Skittles* website as a redirect to social network sites. The main page showed a Twitter search for “skittles”. Other links went to flickr, Facebook, and Wikipedia.

Sure enough, the pattern is there in blogosphere as well. I classified the opinions in Skittles articles on the Google News page and a handful of the top hits on Google Blogs as positive, neutral, and negative. The results:

women: 6 positive, 4 neutral, 0 negative

men: 12 positive, 3 neutral, 8 negative

And when I say “negative”, whoa baby. David says “By just about any rational indication, Skittles went too far.” Noah characterizes it as “generally A Bad Idea” and “a gaffe”. Harry sees it as “social-media marketing nihilism.” Riche thinks it’s “the worst strategic decision I have seen online in a long time.” Yow.

There’s no easy way to know how much this reflects an actual difference in opinions. It could be that women avoid harsh criticisms in favor of neutrally-worded posts like Allyson Kapin‘s and Shannon Nelson‘s raising questions about the effectiveness of Skittles’ strategy. One way or another, though, it’s really striking.

Twitter is an opportunity to engage with communities currently marginalized by the “progressive blogosphere”.

There’s an important lesson here for anybody trying to understand social media, and Twitter in particular. Make sure you’re getting a range of opinions — as well as gender-based differences, there are also age-based differences. In particular, if you’re getting your political news from the male-dominated “progressive” or “conservative” blogospheres (or the mainstream media and pundits who look to the big bloggers as being on the cutting edge), be aware of the possibility that you’re getting a distorted view of social network sites and their value.**

Today Skittles’ home page instead redirects to their Facebook page. Any bets on how people will react?